If you'd rather live surrounded by pristine objects than by the traces of happy memories, stay focused on tangible things. Otherwise, stop fixating on stuff you can touch and start caring about stuff that touches you.

This is the part of us that makes our brief, improbable little lives worth living: the ability to reach through our own isolation and find strength, and comfort, and warmth for and in each other. This is what human beings do. This is what we live for, the way horses live to run.

My deep belief is that all of us have the same lifelong work: to learn honesty, courage, and love. To learn, in other words, how to be our best selves.

I'm not saying we have power over everything in our lives - if that were true, my hair would look so, so different - but I am saying that there's no circumstance in which we are completely powerless.

Tiny steps will get you to your goal months and months sooner. A little is better than a lot.

You get social pressure from your parents, who teach you to pay attention to certain things and not to others. You get it in school.

The important thing is to tell yourself a life story in which you, the hero, are primarily a problem solver rather than a helpless victim. This is well within your power, whatever fate might have dealt you.